


pick up your rope, lord - sling it to me

by pdoesart (elphie_jolras)



Series: they're talking about war on the radio [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Canon-Typical Violence, Crime Fighting, Daredevil AU, F/M, Marian is Matt Murdock except she can see, Marian is a bruiser, Swearing, and her dad wasn't murdered, is this red hawke or purple hawke? nobody knows, marian beats people up, varric may call sebastian choir boy but SURPRISE marian was in a church choir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 05:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7495752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elphie_jolras/pseuds/pdoesart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Be careful of the Hawkes.  They got the devil in them.</p><p>OR</p><p>three things about marian hawke's life before her father's death, and three things after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pick up your rope, lord - sling it to me

**Author's Note:**

> I bet you weren't expecting more of this AU already? I'm trash for this and it's been a day.
> 
> "Pick up your rope, Lord; sling it to me  
> For if we must battle, I must not be weak.  
> Oh give us your strength, world,  
> and your food and your water,  
> for I am your savior - your last serving daughter"

i.

Marian Hawke is seven when her father teaches her to fight.  The twins are four and starting school in a year, and so she asks her daddy what to do if she sees them getting picked on.

“Let me show you something, Mare,” he says in that gentle voice of his, taking his hands in her own, “This is how you throw a punch.”

And he forms her small hands into fists and holds his own hands up, palms out, and tells her to punch at his palm.  So she does, again and again, until Malcolm is satisfied with his daughter’s form.  “Aim for the jaw,” he tells her, “because a well-placed punch to the jaw is going to knock any bully flat on their back.”

Marian nods, because she understands.  She’s ready to fight any person who dares to say something about the fact that Brett likes dresses and wants to grow his hair out, or the way Carver will say an _s_ but it’ll be a _th_ instead.  But Malcolm takes her hands in his once more, and he looks right into her blue eyes.

“Just one more thing, Mare,” he tells her.  “I don’t want you starting any fights.  The world’s a violent enough place as it is.  You gotta promise me this – you won’t start any fights, but if someone else picks a fight with you, you’ll finish it.”

“I promise.  But what if I get knocked down, daddy?” she asks, chin stuck up in the air like the proud little princess that she is.  Malcolm smiles at her, and his eyes soften.

“If you get knocked down, baby, you get back up.  And you keep fighting.”

ii.

Marian puts the lessons to good use when she’s ten years old.  _Brett_ is _Bethany_ now and the family’s fine with that, but there are kids at school who still try to call her little sister a _boy_ and that’s wrong.  It’s wrong, and it makes Bethany cry, and so Marian faces off against the sixth grader teasing Bethany and tells him to back off, _or else_.

But the older boy doesn’t listen, so Marian knocks him flat on his back with a swift right hook.  And then there’s a crowd of kids around and some kindergartener is crying, and the teachers are pulling her away with rough hands as though she’s going haul off and deck someone else.

“Why did you do it?” the principal asks her.  Marian sticks her chin into the air and stares at him defiantly.

“He made my sister cry,” she says fiercely, then, “Nobody’s allowed to do that.”

Marian is suspended for three days.

“This is ridiculous,” Leandra rages as soon as they get in the door of their home, “Malcolm, I can’t believe you taught her how to _fight_!”

“What else was I supposed to do, Andy?” Malcolm demands of his wife, “You and I both know that she wants to protect the twins – it’s sibling instinct!  Better she know how to throw a punch than get into something she can’t handle!”

Hawke goes upstairs and tries to tune out the sounds of her parents arguing.  Later, when Malcolm peeks around the door, she licks her lips before posing her most pressing question:

“Am I in trouble, Dad?”

Malcolm pulls her into a tight hug and presses a kiss to the crown of her head.  “No, Mare, you’re not in trouble.  You did what you thought was right.”

“But you and Mom were fighting.”

“Oh, sweetie…” her father rocks her on his lap even though she’s getting too big for such things, and he presses more kisses to her dark hair.  “That wasn’t because of you, okay?  Never worry that it’s about you.  I’m proud of you, Mare.  You stood up for your sister.”

He’s proud of her; that knowledge fills Marian like helium, and she thinks she might float away.  Being suspended is worth it, knowing that her dad is proud of her.  She’ll protect anyone to make him proud of her; she’ll do anything.  Because they pull apart and Malcolm has his lopsided grin that he usually only gets when he’s joking around, and her heart feels like it’s about to burst because she’s so _happy_.

iii.

Mom takes them to church on Sundays, Marian and Bethany and Carver; she dresses them in their nicest clothes and packs them into the car and drives them to the pretty Catholic church in town.  They sit through Mass and it takes hours but Marian is quiet and good because the faith makes Mom happy, and Marian lives to see her family happy.

She confesses her sins to the Father behind the screen, tells him the wrongs she’s committed and waits for him to absolve her of them.  Dad never comes to church – Mare doesn’t know why.

One day as they’re leaving, a woman only slightly older than Mom shakes her head at the bruises on Marian’s knuckles and sighs, saying “It’s that Hawke blood.  He passed the devil onto his children.”

If they weren’t in a house of God, Marian decides, she would show that woman just how much of the devil lives inside her.

She goes to church on Sundays and she tries to be a good Catholic girl but sometimes praying over her rosary is so hard, and she hates feeling people’s eyes on her bloodied knuckles and split lip.  At a church picnic one Sunday afternoon, an ancient woman with skin like crumpled paper and hair that looks as if it’s made of cotton balls suggests that maybe Marian should join the choir.

So she does; anything to make her mother happy.  She learns the hymns and she tries to control her temper, but it always flares when her family is threatened and she knows that wrath is a sin but she doesn’t know how else to make the people hurting her family stop.  Singing helps, gives her something to focus on, but even when she tries to talk to the bullies and keep her temper down by singing _amazing grace, how sweet the sound…_ in her head, she inevitably becomes enraged and inevitably goads the bully into a fight.

That’s what the women at church don’t understand – she never _starts_ the fights.  She made a promise to her father and she’s not going to break that, not in a million years.  But her tongue is as quick as her temper and even harder to control, and the bullies always throw the first punch.  Sometimes, it’s the only punch they get, because Marian knows how to win a fight.  She tries to make the songs louder than her wit but it never works; she tries to pray to God but she never finds the strength to keep her temper in check.

And still the women whisper. _She’s a Hawke, alright.  That family has the devil in them._

( interlude:

Her father isn’t murdered, and somehow that makes it worse.

He gets some rare disease and he wastes away in front of her, and for once there’s no one she can fight.  There’s nothing she can do to protect him, and suddenly her father who has always seemed so tall and broad and strong is reduced to a frail figure, little more than skin and bone.

She’s whittling by his bedside with the knife he gave her for her tenth birthday when it happens; her hand slips for the first time, slicing open her thumb.  She cries out, setting her knife aside and going to call for a nurse, but her father takes her wrist.  And maybe he’s delusional from his pain meds, but he guides her hand to her face and brushes her thumb across her nose, leaving a streak of red behind.

She grabs a bandaid from a nurse outside, and by the time she gets back into the room, Malcolm Hawke is dead.  The man who taught her to punch, to laugh, to play guitar and carve wood, left her without even saying goodbye.

Marian starts crying and she can’t stop until they get home, and even then it’s only because she gets angry instead.  Leandra wants her to wash the blood off of her face but she can’t because it feels like it’s all she has left of her dad.  She steals one of Malcolm’s old leather jackets from her parent’s closet and she wears it everywhere, even in the dead of summer, and when the blood comes off of her nose she reapplies it with dark red lipstick.  It’s her war paint, her armor.  She aces classes and exams but she isn’t the golden child.  She never will be again. )

iv.

Marian goes to law school because she wants to _help_ people.  She meets Varric sophomore year and they become best friends almost without trying.

They form _Tethras & Hawke _because it’s the obvious move; two young lawyers fresh out of school, of course they’re going to make their own firm.  Marian is stubborn and Varric is brilliant and, honestly, she can’t imagine working with anyone else.  They rent an office in Hell’s Kitchen, and get ready to defend those wrongly accused of crimes.

Varric’s the only one who knows her secret – _the_ secret.  How she’s always been able to hear and smell a little better than other people, but how once she hit puberty it’s like her body went into overdrive and now she can hear people’s heartbeats and she can smell the scent of roses whenever Varric sneaks off to see Bianca.  Therefore, Marian’s pretty good at knowing when people are lying, and that makes it easy to know what cases to take.

Marian’s been friends with Chief Vallen for _ages_ – she met Aveline during a college visit and quickly befriended the older woman.  Aveline’s a good cop, one of the only good ones that Marian’s seen.  It’s because of Aveline that Marian finds out about Fenris, and it’s Aveline who lets them in to see the suspect.

The tattooed man accused of murder doesn’t lie once when they question him, and Marian turns to look at Varric.  “We’ll take the case,” she says.

( another interlude:

Marian puts on the mask because she has people she cares about and she doesn’t want them to be hurt.

Part of her knows that she’s breaking her promise when her fist first connects with a Carta member’s face, but the rest of her rationalizes the guilt away.  _These_ people started the fight when they started kidnapping people.  Her father’s spirit will forgive her for this, she thinks.  She hopes.

She goes to confessional for the first time in almost a year, and she knows who the priest behind the screen is because Father Sebastian is _shit_ at being anything other than incredibly Scottish.

“Forgive me, Father,” she says softly, “I have committed many sins since my last confession.”

“And when was that?” the priest asks.  She laughs.

“A year ago?  Maybe?”

She unburdens her soul because she thinks doing so would make Mom proud of her, because it’s the Catholic thing to do.

That night, she puts on the mask and slips out of her apartment window.  There’s been another kidnapping – a little girl.  She’s going to make them pay.

 _Be careful of the Hawkes.  They got the devil in them._ )

v.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Marian is light on her feet and invisible in the shadows; the thug is lucky she let herself be seen at all.  Something like a grin pulls at her lips, and she knows that it’s a feral thing, the grin of a predator.  She notices discomfort on the thug’s face – _good_.  He should be afraid of her.

“Your worst nightmare,” Marian says, sharp.  “You wanna let the girl go?  Maybe you’ll get out of here on your own two feet if you do.”

“And what if I don’t?  Just because a bitch in a mask tells me to do something – ”

She doesn’t let him finish the sentence; she lashes out with a punch to his solar plexus.

“ _Shit_!”

She doesn’t give him a chance to retaliate; she sends an uppercut to his jaw and then dances away as he staggers, the blinding combination of blows sending him reeling.

That’s when he pulls out the gun.  Well, fuck.

“ _Run_!” she screams to the teenage girl who is frozen in the shadows.  After a second, the almost-victim dashes away.  Satisfied, Marian turns her attention back to the thug, wondering if she can get to the gun before he can fire it.

She makes what is, in hindsight, a completely idiotic dive for him.  He shoots and pain flares in her upper arm, but that just makes her angrier. And then, because old habits die hard, lyrics float unbidden to the forefront of her mind.

_Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…_

A vicious front kick knocks her opponent off-balance and she takes the opportunity to twist his wrist – the gun falls to the asphalt – and then strikes him on the temple with the edge of her hand.  At last, he drops to the ground unconscious.  Marian stoops to pick up the gun, switches the safety on, and runs for the nearest building.

She climbs through Anders’ window (probably dripping blood onto the sill, whoops) and scares the hell out of him.

“Jesus Christ, Hawke!” he exclaims, seeing the gun in her hand and the way she’s covering her arm, “Did you get _shot_?!”

Poor Anders is probably going to have an aneurysm soon, she thinks idly as she sits down on his couch, nodding in response to his question.  It would be a shame if he did, of course, because he _is_ quite handsome, with his blond bun and aquiline nose and those whiskey eyes.  Even if those eyes have dark bags under them, and even if the majority of times she’s seen him he’s been wearing an oversized t-shirt and a bathrobe that’s too short for him.  After all, she’s probably looked just as shitty lately, with her bruises and her scars and the occasional broken rib.

“The other guy is worse off,” she tells him as he dabs at the wound with some sort of cotton thing, “Shit, that hurts, are you putting _vodka_ or some shit into my bullet wound?”

“Don’t be such an infant,” Anders grumbles, “It’s just a graze.  Whoever you were fighting had atrocious aim, lucky for you.”

She smiles wide at that, hoping that she looks as charismatic as someone can be when they’re covered in blood.

“Yes, yes, you’re very pretty,” he tells her, “Now hold this on it, I need to get you a bandage.”

vi.

She and Anders kiss, and it feels like her life has fallen into place.

She’s at his house without an injury for once, because he invited her over for dinner and together they’ve enjoyed a bottle of red wine and a couple of mixed drinks that she’s thrown together.  Then they sit on the couch, side by side, the tv playing some hallmark movie in the background.

“You’ve gotten another bruise,” Anders says.  His voice sounds sad, and his fingers trace the mark on her cheek gently.  She smiles.

“This one’s not from vigilantism, I promise.”  And her hand catches his, holding his fingers against her skin.  “The prosecution got a little wild in court yesterday.  One of them hauled off and punched me in the face.  There’s another one, here,” – she takes his hand from her cheek and presses it against her side, along her ribs – “From a thug in an alley who wouldn’t give up the name of the man who hired him.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if you got seriously hurt,” he tells her.  His voice sounds desperate, and now his _eyes_ look sad.  In that moment, Marian realizes that the aching, yearning sensation in her chest is her complete and utter love for the doctor before her.  She leans forward until their faces are nearly touching, and breathes a response just before she presses her lips to his.

“You could always help me search for armor.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Hope In The Air" by Laura Marling.
> 
> Hawke reads a lot like Red Hawke here which is? not exactly what I was going for but w/e. She's like a blue/purple Hawke who deals with things aggressively.


End file.
